When 45 alumni of Tsinghua University, the alma mater of China’s last two leaders, stopped for lunch at La Motte vineyard in South Africa two years ago, they ordered 1.5 million rand ($141,000) of wine to take away.

That spurred La Motte Chief Executive Officer Hein Koegelenberg, 53, to tap the Franschhoek valley’s Huguenot heritage to challenge the dominance of French vintners in China. Koegelenberg, brother-in-law of Cie. Financiere Richemont SA Chairman Johann Rupert, who heads South Africa’s richest family with a net worth of $8.9 billion, plans to boost exports to China by 25 percent this year after last August luring the first Chinese investors to the country’s wine industry.

“China has the biggest market potential by far,” Koegelenberg said in an interview at La Motte, owned by his wife, Hanneli, 77 kilometers (48 miles) east of Cape Town. “We planted vineyards at the same time as those in Bordeaux and South Africa is producing some of the best wine in the world.”